From Bulger's killer to the Afghan war, Labour's cult of official secrecy is an insult to all of us

Just weeks before a general election, the Prime Minister provides a photo-opportunity of himself, posing with our brave boys in Afghanistan.

A few hours later, it is announced that no reporters will be permitted to visit the front line during that election campaign, lest what they see and hear should influence the outcome.

Justice minister Jack Straw tells parliament he will not disclose the reason why Jamie Bulger's killer Jon Venables has been returned to prison, lest this prejudice possible future criminal proceedings.

And on Sunday, the BBC's Panorama reported that more than 60 per cent of NHS hospital trusts provide the public with inaccurate information about their performance.

Here, within the space of a few days, is an extraordinary range of examples of the manner in which official secrecy routinely operates in Britain, all year round.

The alleged right of the Government and institutions to withhold information - even on issues of the utmost importance to the public interest - is exercised again and again, at the convenience of ministers and civil servants.

In 21st century Britain, a chasm now exists: between the feast of information the sovereign and corporate states possess about us and the crumbs they disclose about themselves.

RELATED ARTICLES

Share this article

Share

Each of us knows that records of our phone calls, finances, household circumstances, shopping transactions and even physical movements are monitored by thousands of computers and tens of thousands of CCTV cameras.

We are aware that such information is likely to be broadcast and sold to scores of other organisations, regardless of whether or not we tick the box for non-disclosure.

Making such tiny gestures to protect our privacy is futile amid the floodtide of data that is already jamming networks.

The Government, in contrast, discloses information about its own workings and those of public bodies like a miser paying his bills in 10p coins on the last day of the month.

It knows almost everything about us - but we are told vastly less about them than we rightfully should be.

The Afghan example above is grotesque. British forces are engaged in a serious war on the far side of the world.

The Government has handled it badly - recklessly, even - above all, by under-resourcing.

Jamie Bulger, murdered aged two by Jon Venables and Robert Thompson

Many soldiers are understandably bitter, as almost every day they experience the consequences of trying to do too much with too little.

This is embarrassing for our Government and should be a source of personal shame to the prime minister, if he was capable of such a sentiment.

But it is extraordinary that the Ministry of Defence should deem it acceptable to deny frontline access to the media ahead of polling day, lest reporters discover things that further damage New Labour.

Such behaviour, however, is institutionalised. Take another example: in recent months, evidence has emerged that the huge increase in immigration to Britain since 1997 was endorsed by the Blair regime in pursuit of its own political ends.

Some of its principals favoured immigration as a social engineering tool.

Blair believed a large influx of immigrants would irreversibly alter the character of Britain towards becoming a multicultural and more left-leaning society.

Not only was any hint of such motives concealed at the time, but documentation on this supremely sensitive issue remains to this day locked in Whitehall files.

It is striking to contrast the manner in which this country conducts its official business with that of the United States.

Across the Atlantic, there is an overwhelming presumption in favour of disclosure.

Congressional committees constantly demand - and receive - information about the inner workings of government departments that in Britain would never be revealed to their parliamentary counterparts.

In the U.S. the Freedom of Information Act really means what it claims - an ordinary individual can exercise a right to be shown material, not least about themselves, which would be denied over here.

In Britain, the demands of security are routinely cited to conceal blunders. Remember the 2008 Gulf fiasco? British sailors and Royal Marines were captured by the Iranians in an incident that became a national humiliation.

Some months later, the then defence secretary, the egregious Des Browne, told the Commons that an internal inquiry had been held.

But he announced that its entire report was being classified, on security grounds. The Tories limply - and quite wrongly - acquiesced in this.

There were genuine security issues in some parts of the report, which it would have been right to blank out.

But concealment of the whole document was designed simply to spare the blushes of the Royal Navy's top brass.

Secrecy was abused for convenience, not security. The MoD should never have been allowed to get away with hiding its dirty linen.

More recently, of course, there was last year's Commons expenses scandal.

From beginning to end, MPs fought tooth and nail to prevent the disclosure of their abuse of public funds. Their rearguard action was led by the then Speaker, the appalling Michael Martin, today a peer, if you please.

Day after day in the courts, at taxpayers' expense, Martin struggled to conceal first the details of his own excesses and then those of hundreds of MPs.

In the end, thank goodness, he lost and we won. Every window-box and lavatory seat was exposed. But how can MPs be surprised by the public's abiding suspicion and, indeed, contempt for the system?

They strove to defend the indefensible to save their skins.

Most of us find it easy to define the criteria for protecting or revealing official secrets. There is a real public interest in concealing some processes of government, especially diplomacy, for a period of time.

There is, however, no public interest in protecting ministers and officials who have blundered from embarrassment.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is given a demonstration by soldiers in Afghanistan

How many people suppose the details of Jon Venables's reimprisonment are being concealed merely to serve justice?

How many, instead, think the justice department's overriding concern is to shield those who released him in the first place?

No U.S. government would dare to exclude the media from the Afghan combat zone when the congressional mid-term elections loom.

But our government casually imposes a ban - because it is accustomed to getting away with such abuses.

Britain in 2010 is a more open society than it was in, say, 1960, but that is not saying much.

The culture of official secrecy, the belief in the Government's right not to tell us things, remains deep-rooted in every inch of Westminster and Whitehall soil.

We must dig and hack at it at every turn, insisting that when ministers and officials deny us information, they are challenged.

If legal super-injunctions to protect celebrities from the exposure of their follies represent an abuse of justice, official secrecy again and again proves an abuse of democracy.

Politicians will always lie. That is part of their trade, as the panel of the Iraq Inquiry can testify.

But the rightful business of a democracy's media and citizens is to ensure that they cannot manipulate the machinery of government to get away with it.

Share or comment on this article:

Jon Venables: Labour's cult of official secrecy is an insult to all of us